Two city streets will be rebuilt

Published 6:30 am, Thursday, April 21, 2011

Two of Edwardsville's older streets, Sherman Avenue and Liberty Street, will be reconstructed under a contract approved Tuesday.

The City Council accepted the low bid of $578,999 from Gleeson Asphalt, of Belleville.

The bid was $50,000 lower than the city’s estimate and significantly lower than four other competing bids.

City Engineer Eric Williams said the city combined the two streets into one project to take advantage of scale and get better bid prices.

Williams said Gleason’s bid was approximately $441,000 for Sherman and $137,000 for Liberty.

The work on Sherman will be funded from the Capital Improvement Program Fund. The Liberty job will use money provided by the firm TransCanada Keystone.

That company had asked the city to use Liberty Street to transport construction materials and heavy equipment as they constructed their oil pipeline from Canada to Wood River. After an engineering report revealed that the street would not be able to handle the heavy loads, the city asked the company for $200,000 upfront to repair the road when they were finished, and the company agreed.

In 2010, the city hired Crawford, Murphy and Tilly to do the preliminary engineering work on both projects and paid the firm $66,340 for Sherman and $30,200 for Liberty.

Williams said the work is scheduled to begin in late May and end in August. He said the Public Works Office will conduct an informational meeting for area residents before the work begins.

The city will completely reconstruct Sherman from Jefferson to Logan. All existing pavement will be removed and replaced, and storm sewers, concrete guttering and sidewalks on west side will be added.

On Liberty, existing asphalt will be removed and replaced, curbing and guttering will be added and the water main underneath will be replaced, in a separately funded in-house city project.